Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) đ
- Author: Sinclair Lewis
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She ventured to the lead-colored dwelling of Mrs. Dave Dyer. Behind the mask of winter-stripped vines and a wide porch only a foot above the ground, the cottage was so impersonal that Carol could never visualize it. Nor could she remember anything that was inside it. But Mrs. Dyer was personal enough. With Carol, Mrs. Howland, Mrs. McGanum, and Vida Sherwin she was a link between the Jolly Seventeen and the serious Thanatopsis (in contrast to Juanita Haydock, who unnecessarily boasted of being a âlowbrowâ and publicly stated that she would âsee herself in jail before sheâd write any darned old club papersâ). Mrs. Dyer was superfeminine in the kimono in which she received Carol. Her skin was fine, pale, soft, suggesting a weak voluptuousness. At afternoon-coffees she had been rude but now she addressed Carol as âdear,â and insisted on being called Maud. Carol did not quite know why she was uncomfortable in this talcum-powder atmosphere, but she hastened to get into the fresh air of her plans.
Maud Dyer granted that the city hall wasnât âso very nice,â yet, as Dave said, there was no use doing anything about it till they received an appropriation from the state and combined a new city hall with a national guard armory. Dave had given verdict, âWhat these mouthy youngsters that hang around the poolroom need is universal military training. Make men of âem.â
Mrs. Dyer removed the new schoolbuilding from the city hall:
âOh, so Mrs. Mott has got you going on her school craze! Sheâs been dinging at that till everybodyâs sick and tired. What she really wants is a big office for her dear bald-headed Gawge to sit around and look important in. Of course I admire Mrs. Mott, and Iâm very fond of her, sheâs so brainy, even if she does try to butt in and run the Thanatopsis, but I must say weâre sick of her nagging. The old building was good enough for us when we were kids! I hate these would-be women politicians, donât you?â
IVThe first week of March had given promise of spring and stirred Carol with a thousand desires for lakes and fields and roads. The snow was gone except for filthy woolly patches under trees, the thermometer leaped in a day from wind-bitten chill to itchy warmth. As soon as Carol was convinced that even in this imprisoned North, spring could exist again, the snow came down as abruptly as a paper storm in a theater; the northwest gale flung it up in a half blizzard; and with her hope of a glorified town went hope of summer meadows.
But a week later, though the snow was everywhere in slushy heaps, the promise was unmistakable. By the invisible hints in air and sky and earth which had aroused her every year through ten thousand generations she knew that spring was coming. It was not a scorching, hard, dusty day like the treacherous intruder of a week before, but soaked with languor, softened with a milky light. Rivulets were hurrying in each alley; a calling robin appeared by magic on the crab-apple tree in the Howlandsâ yard. Everybody chuckled, âLooks like winter is going,â and âThisâll bring the frost out of the roadsâ âhave the autos out pretty soon nowâ âwonder what kind of bass-fishing weâll get this summerâ âought to be good crops this year.â
Each evening Kennicott repeated, âWe better not take off our Heavy Underwear or the storm windows too soonâ âmight be ânother spell of coldâ âgot to be careful âbout catching coldâ âwonder if the coal will last through?â
The expanding forces of life within her choked the desire for reforming. She trotted through the house, planning the spring cleaning with Bea. When she attended her second meeting of the Thanatopsis she said nothing about remaking the town. She listened respectably to statistics on Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Scott, Hardy, Lamb, De Quincey, and Mrs. Humphry Ward, who, it seemed, constituted the writers of English Fiction and Essays.
Not till she inspected the restroom did she again become a fanatic. She had often glanced at the store-building which had been turned into a refuge in which farmwives could wait while their husbands transacted business. She had heard Vida Sherwin and Mrs. Warren caress the virtue of the Thanatopsis in establishing the restroom and in sharing with the city council the expense of maintaining it. But she had never entered it till this March day.
She went in impulsively; nodded at the matron, a plump worthy widow named Nodelquist, and at a couple of farm-women who were meekly rocking. The restroom resembled a secondhand store. It was furnished with discarded patent rockers, lopsided reed chairs, a scratched pine table, a gritty straw mat, old steel engravings of milkmaids being morally amorous under willow-trees, faded chromos of roses and fish, and a kerosene stove for warming lunches. The front window was darkened by torn net curtains and by a mound of geraniums and rubber-plants.
While she was listening to Mrs. Nodelquistâs account of how many thousands of farmersâ wives used the restroom every year, and how much they âappreciated the kindness of the ladies in providing them with this lovely place, and all free,â she thought, âKindness nothing! The kind-ladiesâ husbands get the farmersâ trade. This is mere commercial accommodation. And itâs horrible. It ought to be the most charming room in town, to comfort women sick of prairie kitchens. Certainly it ought to have a clear window, so that they can see the metropolitan life go by. Some day Iâm going to make a better restroomâ âa clubroom. Why! Iâve already planned that as part of my Georgian town hall!â
So it chanced that she was plotting against the peace of the
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